AMG Review of Will

Kingsley Marshall
All Music Guide

With so many producers having shrugged off previously restrictive (albeit convenient) genre pigeonholing, it shouldn't really come as a surprise to find yet another artist popping up in unexpected territory. Despite all this, for a whole album of uplifting house from Japan's master of skeletal melodics to pop up on Tony Morley's forever impressive Leaf label, the listener was sure to incur some level of aural anaphylactic shock. Though some distance from the intricate arrangements that have characterized much of his previous work, Will demonstrates a hitherto little-known club-friendly side of Yokota's own Skintone imprint. Highlights of the eight-track broadcast from the artists' Shibuya studio includes the shuffling samba of "Red Door" and "Pegasus Man," just pipped by the deep grooves of "Black Sea," where beats tumble through misty atmospheres before becoming lost in barely discernible acoustic guitar loops.